


Restored (Unarmed)

by panther3751



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-SPECTRE, Spoilers for SPECTRE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 17:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5214125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panther3751/pseuds/panther3751
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drive off into the sunset.</p><p>(Worry about the lack of armaments on your car)</p><p>Consider a normal life.</p><p>(Is it a bad thing, to want it, to fail at it?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restored (Unarmed)

**Author's Note:**

> (not betaed, yet)  
> (rated for language, mainly)

The car should have been his first clue.

No, not her reaction to it, but -

* * *

 

James watched Madeline's thighs slide, a caress of rich fabric against leather, across the passenger seat as she entered the car. Half high from the joy of being reunited with the DB5 again - half swept up by the satisfaction of thinking _yes, it all fits, this is my life as it goes forwards -_ he considered it a rather tactile metaphor for them. It was a silly thought. 

Given everything, he was allowing himself more of such "silly thoughts" of late. It felt like a great luxury. Unlike before, when he was dead (and recovering from being shot, yes), being free from MI6 now made him feel younger, rejuvenated. Perks of being able to still live a real life within London, he supposed. He also supposed it was a perk of that improbable feeling of love once again. Perhaps this is what that "honeymoon" feeling was supposed to be like?

"Is it still armed?" she asked, only half joking.

Muscle-memory moved his hand toward the location of the high-velocity passenger seat ejector switch before he looked down.

It was gone.

Hand hovering, the only evidence of his great shock, James blinked once in confusion. The fact Q would have disconnected it, that wasn't a question. From bonnet to tyres, nothing was going to be lethal in that car anymore, aside from its driver. James only wanted to tease a little, dramatically unveiling a red "EJECT" button, having felt a childish urge to watch Madeleine jump. 

But Q had been surprised to see him that morning. James, admittedly, had been a little worried his car would still be in pieces - yet just as promised, perhaps finished weeks before his official resignation (he thought) - his special little nostalgic project was primed and ready. He suspected M wanted to use it as a bargaining tool to bring him back. Luck served him well again.

As a chip to play in a game to bring Bond back into the fold, the car should have been armed to the teeth. Q would be able to disarm it in moments, of course, but the buttons and switches couldn't be removed within an hour, surely. But it was gone. A quick visual sweep of the dash confirmed that, while his other personal modifications were there - this was indeed _his_ Aston Martin - the car seemed to have been restored to full beauty as a civilian car.

Why?

A moment would be missed by most civilians, and even some spies. Madeleine knew him ( _knew_ him, as much as James was trying to let her) and had a psychologists' pedigree besides. With only a touch of gentleness, and a great deal more obvious dose of content satisfaction, she commented, "Perhaps your retirement wasn't such a surprise after all. Your friends know you better than you think."

"Don't give Q too much credit," his hand smoothly went toward the shift lever instead, using the same  _ha ha only serious_  tone he would have used had the ejector switch actually been where it should be. He smirked. "I think we just took somebody important's weekender car."

They smiled.

Her golden curls reflected the sunset's hues nicely.

* * *

 

When James turned thirty, he knew he'd die a 00 agent.

After Vesper, he thought it a cruel twist of fate it hadn't happened before he was forty.

After Skyfall, he knew he'd exist in some form or another until the old stones of Vauxhill were pounded down and mixed into mortar for some new spectacle of London. James Bond  _was_  007, a fixture as much as an asset, easily killed as he was easily resurrected - by new a younger agent much like him, if not himself. He was an idea, an institution; immutable and disposable at once. Like M ( _his_ M) he'd always be there, a living ghost or a dead mentor, for as long as MI6 would have a 00 program.

After the exposure of SPECTRE ...

Choice was a strange thing.

* * *

 

He couldn't get angry with her.

It made him angry, how he couldn't get angry with her.

When the same bed and its  _sameness_ left him unable to sleep; when the night terrors revealed he actually wasn't alone after all, and it was worse somehow; when he was neither judged nor excused by a habitual return to a liquid breakfast; she was there. Not perfect, but  _honest_ , and yes he loved her the more for it - but began to resent her the more for it.

The careful but blunt statements such as, "I think, since you're awake, you're not sleeping well. I also see you don't want to talk about it. That's okay."

And, "I can see you're frustrated. I can't imagine what you've been through. It sounds overwhelming."

And always, "Maybe I don't understand. But it's real, and it's bothering you. That's normal."

His feelings were - he had  _wanted_ normal. To not wake up in a different bed every morning. To have a home with pictures hung on the walls, decorations scattered about, perhaps even curtains which were for more than concealment from snipers. It hadn't been just a want, it was a yearning; didn't he deserve this, if he had choices, if he had made the choice to live a normal life and be a normal man? Yet that meant he had to approach what he thought, what he felt, like a normal man as well.

(It was so strange, so alien, and he wished so hard he wasn't playacting.)

As a soldier, thoughts and feelings were compartmentalized, placed out of the way of your assignment. As an agent, thoughts were assets and liabilities; feelings were tools and accessories, no more or less. He'd take off the coat of anger and put on a jacket of nonchalance. A dinner suit of interested seduction replaced by a cold pair of boots to infiltrate and interrogate. And as an assassin, his feelings and thoughts were not really his own. He was the British Government's. James always considered himself a more spirited, even rebellious sort, who would rely on his instincts and not follow orders by rote. But in the end, it was the best interests of England he'd be considering, not his own.

When his feelings were his, there was no disrobing and placing them within a wardrobe once he was tired of them. They were always  _there_.

It had been better, that Madeleine understood this; having lived among killers, having treated many injured, having consoled many wealthy people with too much power and too little conscience. The theme was that his thoughts and feelings were valid and real. That he always had choices and his choices were his own. That it was normal for his body (human, even as an assassin, all too human) to react in ways he didn't like. James knew all of this, thought it obvious. Having Madeleine be on the same page as him, knowing without fretting or hovering or worrying, was a relief.

It was infuriating.

It was worse, that Madeleine understood this; he couldn't pretend. He couldn't have the benefit of just being  _normal_ , because he'd never be normal. He always checked entrances and exits. He always felt the ghost of a gun underneath his unarmed pillow. He always drove as if he may be followed. James wanted to  _choose_ to live a normal life despite all that. Madeleine said he could, believed he could, but didn't allow him to bullshit when things weren't all right.

If she did pretend - or if she did hover or worry - if she was too perfect or too sticky sweet or too foolish to see the ghosts which lingered -

It'd be better if James could hate her, get angry.

* * *

 

The second sign had been the fact that while Eve Moneypenny called - became chatty friends with Madeleine, in fact - that Q didn't.

In fact ...

It struck James as odd. He would admonish himself, then, because it  _shouldn't_ strike him as odd at all. While Q had been a constant voice in his ear on missions, he had grown to learn that the younger man actually detested talking on the phone, and preferred to text. And while James had been teased, subtly, for his clumsy and utilitarian texts at the onset (before any actual onset of anything) he had become quite adept after much nightly practice.

And now it was the same;

Texts received sporadically during what had to have been Q's lunch hour, vague but recognizable criticisms and witticisms about new and veteran agents alike.

A brief call every couple of weeks, quiet and blunt, more out of deference to James' preference to voices over the written word than what would make Q comfortable. 

But utilitarian, now, when in voice; too vague (even for a spy agency) within text. On top of this, as an agency of spies, such subtle cues were expected as matter of course. What one said was as important as what one didn't say. Technicians and physicians who treated spies weren't immune to picking up on their habits. If they told an agent under their charge something, they were implying five other things; they probably even had a bloody training manual for it.

What Q had never said, quite loudly;

"Come back to MI6."

"You'd be better than all of them."

"Makes me almost miss your antics."

Or even, "We miss you."

"I miss you."

Or ...

* * *

 

"I love you, James."

"But?" he asked, bitter and not even a little sarcastic. Madeleine sighed.

"No, no 'but', just that. No tricks, no conditions. I do wish you'd take better care of yourself," she said, and seemed pale and ghostly by the bedroom window. The curtains were thick and patterned; deference to both his unshaken paranoia and his desire for normalcy. She appeared as if she were a mirage.

So many invisible, actual apparitions which lingered here. "You say that like I don't even want to take better care of myself."

This was the sort of conversation James hated most. Not because it was about  _feelings_ \- he might have been the exact image of an orphaned raised assassin, but he wasn't that cliched - but because it was about the obvious. And it played out as this; James did want to be normal and healthy, but he wasn't. Madeleine knew he wasn't okay, and said it was fine for him not to be okay. That she accepted him regardless. That he felt impatient with his progress, and that was okay, too. That he self-sabotaged, even; and that was normal, even.

Normal.

Okay.

Frustration.

Madeleine sighed. James could see the lines of exhaustion everywhere, in her. They hadn't really left her face since that day in her office, when he revealed (with typical drama) his profession. She wasn't doing all right, either. But it was so much easier to talk about her problems, her faults, wasn't it?

Patient.

Imperfect.

Frustrated.

"James, if being a spy  _does_ make you happy, you know you could go back to that life, right?"

Still lying on the bed, moving his eyes just slightly away from the cracks on the ceiling, he accused, as if he were joking with a terrorist rather than his girlfriend "Looking for an excuse to leave, now, are we?"

* * *

 

Excuses were easy.

"I'll be right back."

"I've work in the morning."

"Reception is terrible where I'm going, can't call."

"It's the job."

They were best when they were true.

"I hate flying."

"I can't stay, I didn't leave food out for my cats."

"You break most things anyway."

"It's the job."

The third clue, the one James noticed most loudly in the end, was that Q wasn't making any excuses for either of them anymore.

* * *

 

"What are you doing, James?"

Moneypenny wasn't supposed to ask those sorts of questions. Hand on his jacket, halfway to hanging it up beside her door, James let himself scowl fiercely. He was all about feeling things now, apparently. Even when Madeleine wasn't around. Eve could ask "what the hell, Bond?" when they were on mission - before, after, during - and it was expected. Exasperated, confused, annoyed, resigned. But not concerned. Never concerned. Even as friends, they were supposed to approach their relationship like work.

Or perhaps even Moneypenny didn't treat him like a spy anymore. Rolling up his sleeves, James didn't glance at her direction. Despite his obvious anger, he kept his tone light. "Don't know what you mean."

She frowned.

He unscrewed her bottle of Scotch. "Swann kicked me out."

Now she crossed her arms. There was the expression he was more used to. Well, perhaps with a touch more genuine anger. "Bullshit."

He shrugged. "I locked myself out and came here?"

Rolling her eyes, she walked over to him, arm outstretched as if she actually expected to take the bottle away from him. He easily danced and dodged out of her reach, without looking like he was making an obvious effort to do so, looking at the art on her walls. "How stupid do you think -"

He poured her a glass, then himself, before relinquishing the bottle. James handed Moneypenny the glass as a reward for her efforts. "Or maybe I've finally succumbed to your ... superior charms."

This was how a woman looked when they were about to slap you. Ah, yes. James took a sip of his drink, bracing himself. Allowed that moment for Eve to say something, if she were so inclined.

"Come to bed with me, Moneypenny. I'm tired of living a lie." The appropriate look took no effort.

Not that he would have put one in; Eve was tired of this game, and apparently didn't even judge his face good enough to slap this time. Sighing, she took a swift gulp of her own before sitting on her couch. Her hand went to her temples, as if she had a headache. "Oh, James."

 _That_ had sounded too much like Madeleine. Glass was emptied shortly and was abandoned, an ineffectual middleman, for the bottle itself. James found another frame on the wall to examine too closely. Disarmed with even the pretext of a joke, James was left with the option of angry muttering. (So much easier when there wasn't a choice, wasn't there?) "If I wanted pity I'd have stayed home."

They both drank in silence for a bit, after that. Eve, no more than two finger's worth from her glass; James, too much from what was probably a belated birthday present to her from the current M.

At last, James let Moneypenny say the wrong thing, "Do you need to crash on my couch for a few nights?"

But instead of saying what he  _wanted_ to -

(Such as, "Yes")

(or perhaps, "Why not your bed?")

What came out instead was a hushed, "He changed the building codes on me."

Dazed by the apparent non-sequitur, Eve stuttered without thinking, "Excuse me?"

Embarrassed (but not yet trained to be honest in that emotion yet, at least) James glowered in the glass of the photo. Something vintage and tasteful of an older part of London. Hateful.

Casting about for context, she asked, "Headquarters, you mean?"

"No," James huffed. He could lie, but - that was the start of the earlier argument, with Madeleine. He wanted to lie - not about state secrets, but about how happy he was with how things were - and she didn't. To lie now, oddly, to Moneypenny, just seemed like a continuation of that fight. He could fight until he dropped. Or maybe he didn't need to fight with someone who - who didn't  _insist_ on things which were true. Who knew him through lies.

She pressed on during his silence, "Because they'd let you in ..."

"I know, already!" Were he holding the glass, then, it'd be thrown; he would have to be satisfied by rattling the pictureframes when his fist slammed the wall. "You'd have me back, they'd all have me back, it's all  _fine."_

Now, they considered each other, wary and hesitant as they were after she'd shot him. As they hadn't been for months and months. (Nearly a year?)

His shoulders did their best approximation of a slump, tense with all of his thoughts. "I had thought to do this bit," he indicated the jacket, the glass, Moneypenny, "at Q's place, first."

They let that settle in the air a moment, as Eve digested his words. She had known; it wasn't as if  _everyone_ had known, though everyone had rumored. That was fair - everyone had rumored about James and everyone else in the building. Moneypenny joked often, before his retirement, that she was the only person there Bond  _hadn't_ slept with (present and former M included, ha ha). But she had known, for the exact same reason James hadn't slept with her; as a rule, James didn't actually sleep with work colleagues that a) he needed to interact with on a daily basis and b) he respected. 

(That he did respect Q was justified, initially, by the fact he actually very rarely saw him face to face.)

(He was digressing.)

The glass was set on the table, not even emptied. 

Moneypenny looked at him, and didn't flinch.

* * *

 

"Why me?"

"Hm?"

"I know you're awake, old man."

"Lies. I talk in my sleep."

"Nasty habit for a spy."

"Hmmm."

"But, really. Don't you usually go for, well ..."

"Female? Hardly."

"No, that's not what I meant -"

"I'd think you've had heard the rumors."

"Well, yes, but -"

"Then you'd know - ow!"

"That's what you get for interrupting me. So, as I was asking ..."

"You  _knew_ I was bruised there, you snot-faced little ..."

"... don't you usually go for people a bit more disposable?"

James went deathly quiet. Quiet in a way which was a warning.

"... That isn't what I meant, James."

"Oh, really?" Dry, calm.

Rasp of lips against teeth; Q biting them. "... Well. You do break most things of mine anyway, don't you, Bond?"

"Are we getting romantic now?" with scoffing laughter. Not kind, not unkind.

"Romantic? Hardly. But I'm not leaving MI6 anytime soon."

"Hm."

"As in, this is my career? I don't want you to assume I'll ever do something to give that up."

"Ah.  _That's_ why it's you, you realize, at the moment."

"Well. That makes a lot more sense." Relief.

"Don't worry, Q, I won't ever ask you to do something that'd jeopardize your job."

* * *

 

They used to be so honest with their lies to one another, as spies.

Now, James felt as if he was lying by his attempts to be honest, as a civilian.

It wasn't as if James wanted to lie, to kill, to be that kind of person, not any longer.

He just didn't know what he was doing here, with her.

* * *

 

The final, last, obvious neon flashing sign, was when they met at the coffee shop ten months after SPECTRE. No, not in what Q was wearing - soft sweater in dark greens and blues, cut close to his body, making him look as if he were still in university. (What were they called? Hipsters. Ridiculous term.) It was in the once-over, the eyeroll, the closed body language. The quiet, matter-of-fact, almost muttered like he was embarrassed into his plastic lid - "If this is to joke about becoming your mistress, I'm leaving."

Despite the several rather clear indicators, James was still floored. Enough so he couldn't be bothered to muster up a dramatically surprised persona of shock. He just said flatly, blinking at Q as if he'd grown a second head, "You're in love with me."

Q was never well trained enough to have lost the ability to react clumsily to surprise. He got half his coffee on his sweater.

"How?" James was aware of himself enough to whisper. It just didn't make any sense. Q was too smart for that.

(So smart, so clever, just like Madeleine.)

(He was so furious with her, still.)

(He was in love with her, still.)

(He left her five weeks ago.)

(It still felt like a betrayal as his heart swept up, now, galloping like a racehorse.)

(It had  _never_ felt like a betrayal, before, not even after Vesper.) (Too numb after Vesper.)

Mopping up the mess on his front, ineffectually, with paper napkins, Q glared at him. Apparently, being with MI6 had at least taught him how not to blush in public.

"Seriously?" Q asked, not meeting his eyes. "You used to make a living out of the 'how'. When are you going to apologize to Madeleine?"

Thoughts whirling, James blinked as if Q had replied by unholstering a firearm. "Shit."

"I'm serious, James," Q said, and then gave up the napkins as a lost cause. He still wouldn't look the other man in the face. He said quickly, quieter than ever before, "Just, we can talk - talk about, the, um - the past stuff later. It doesn't matter."

James couldn't react fast enough, his brain playing catch-up. Civilian life must have been affecting him more than he'd thought - if he were thrown like this every time someone was in love with him, he'd be killed a decade or more ago - and he asked, "Why don't you think  _she_ has to apologize?"

Matter-of-fact, honest, deflecting, Q was then able to look him in the face. "Because you're an asshole."

He had to laugh, and Q, despite himself, smiled back just a little.

* * *

 

Months passed on.

They ended up, somehow, as friends.

James was asked, "So you're really not going back to MI6?"

He sighed, and answered, "That's not why I left, you know."

"You pretended it was," Madeleine replied.

A shrug, "So I did."

She smiled, patiently. It didn't bother him, anymore. He love(d)(?) her for that, after all.

Instead, he revealed, "He restored the car, personally. Without any weapons. Not even a smokescreen."

Madeleine repeated herself. "Perhaps your retirement wasn't such a surprise after all."

James smiled. Laughed a little ruefully.

"We fight about it, sometimes. I want that eject button."

A knowing eyebrow. "Do you really?"

"Yes." And now, finally, he could say with honesty, "But that's okay."

 

\- FIN -

**Author's Note:**

> I just came out of the theatre an hour ago and felt compelled to write this.


End file.
